The Cross Country Effect of Patent Applications on Ease of Doing Business

Abstract

Innovation and technological progress have long played a critical role in the economic growth of countries. While this relationship has been studied many times, it is not clear exactly how patents play into this equation. We believe that patents have a direct relationship with innovation, and thus, business growth and progress. Therefore, we hypothesized that countries with a greater number of patent applications will have better ease of business scores as measured by the World Bank. To analyze this relationship, we have used World Bank data and created economical and statistical models to understand this crucial relationship to get a better sense of the role patents play in a country’s economy. Contrary to our original hypothesis, no evidence could be found to support a statistically significant effect of the number of patent applications in a country’s economy on that country’s ease of business score.